A Little Life In The Stock Market Today
Today the stock market had a little life in it. Gaining 75 points to start off the week after a dismal performance during the last three weeks. The DOW has been doing outstanding holding on to this level of 16,000-17,000 points. The question is though…How much longer will this last???
There is too much turmoil going on in America as well as around the world for the DOW to even be at this level. So why is the DOW and the other indexes doing so...

Are penny stocks only worth a penny? Well in most cases not even that much, but on the other hand, some $100 stocks are not worth the investment either. I’ve seen yahoo shares go from .78 to $118, back to $4.85 and now 4 years later $23. Home Depot in Dec of 1999 hit $70 a share and now 8 years later it $21.

If your looking for information to learn how to buy stocks for beginners, here’s some that will help you out immensely. Buying a penny stock is just as hard as buying a Dow 30 stock, but the rewards are far greater for a $1.00 stock to grow 100%. It just has to go to $2.00, where as a $100 stock has to go to $200, which is a far greater feat. Most of the time, a $100 stock will have revenues of $2 or $3 billion for its share price. To double in one year, revenues will have to grow to $4 or $6 billion, where as a $1 or $2 stock might have revenues of $50-$100 million. It’s easy for them to grow revenue to 100 or 200 million in a year. This is why the small cap market outperforms the Dow every year.

Just remember that most every company out there was once a stock under $5.00. I have always said that there’s a stock going up over 100% every day in the stock market and if you do your DD’s (due diligence) you can be the one who finds it. Just don’t look for them in the mid – large cap stock. Penny and small cap stocks are where you will find them. Look at the earnings report and make sure they are increasing 50% quarter over quarter minimally and then check out the chart. Look at the volume to see if it has been rising steadily and see if they have been in a trading range for a 3 to 6 months period. The trend is your friend.

Once you see them breakout from that trading range – BUY! The chart will always tell you what to do before the news comes out. Most of the time one or two week after a breakout, the news will come out and push the stock higher. Remember, you want to be ahead of the herd not with them. If you try to follow the herd, it’s likely that you missed the big gains or you got in too late and you missed it all together. Always remember to sell and secure your profits. As Jim Cramer likes to say, “bears make money, bulls make money and pigs get slaughtered.

This is just some of what has to be done, so when you’re ready to start buying stock online, do your DD’s first.

Why you should invest in the stock market? Simple, financial freedom. What other investment form can you start off with $500 and possibly turn it in to millions. It’s a story you heard of 1000’s of times before.

You don’t have to open a corporation, have accounts and spend $1000 of dollars to open a store front, no products to buy, no employees to hire. You simple open an account with an Investment broker and you’re on your way. But what stocks to buy? First, knowledge is power, read, read & read. There are so many investment books out there to choose from. I would say three books on learning growth stocks, three on learning earnings reports and three on learning charting. The reason I suggest three books is that it will give you a few different views in each area and from the three of them you’ll be able to put your own winning strategies together.

After you read all the books you may find that you excel in one of them better then the others, for me it was the charting. It was like wow I can see it. What a turn on to look at a chart and say this company is going up or down in just a couple of minutes. It’s a feeling I would like all of you to have and once that happened for me I went out and got as many books on charting as I could find.

I have a friend who can read an earnings report as well as I can read charts. It’s amazing to see him work as he runs through the numbers like a machine. I came to the conclusion that everyone has their own strengths and weakness’. So after you read all the books, whichever one turns you on the most, consider on buying as many books as you can (or go to the library). I love the market and I hope you will to.

After last week’s 512 point loss on Thursday, it was able to gain back 70 points on Friday. Standard and Poors released a report Friday night as to downgrading the United States credit rating from it’s traditional “AAA” rating down to “AA” rating with a negative outlook. S&P stated that they feel that the politicians in Washington DC have shown their incompetence towards working together and saving the deficit from getting worse. Over the weekend, S&P’s remarks about if the federal government doesn’t get a grip on it’s fiscal irresponsibility, they (S&P) may feel to lower the credit rating again within the next two years.

After all the weekend news and the lack of President Obama coming out to speak about the report, Wall Street and investors alike realize that the economy recovery that Obama has been talking about for the last two years is nothing but a charade. The DOW took an even bigger plunge today falling 632 points after it was all said and done. The DOW closed at 10,809, down 5.55% just for today’s trading period. Since July 21, just two weeks ago, the DOW has lost nearly 16%. A drop like this hasn’t been seen since the recession started almost three years ago. NASDAQ has lost over 6% just today alone and the S&P 500 shaved off 6.66%.

I’ve been talking about this day coming for almost a year. Yes there have been some great moves in the stock markets over that time, but unless you took all your money out of the markets two weeks ago, you lost all that was made during that time. There are many that think that they’re not involved in the stock market, but as they will find out soon enough, what happened on Wall Street these past two weeks has caused many people a major portion of their retirement fund and/or their pension. trillions of dollars of wealth have been lost in just a short period of time and with the actions of our politicians, who really knows how long this crap is going to go on. Japan went through the same thing almost twenty years ago and they’re just coming out of it now. The sad part about that is the fact that Japan is small when compared to the value and size of the United States of America.

We will have people, many of them part of the baby-boomer generation wanting to retire and not being able to cause to the damage to their retirement accounts. they will (in many cases) have to continue working a few more years to make up for the losses they’ve been dealt in these past few years. In turn it will make it harder for the younger generation to find employment, especially since the economy is so bad, that it will keep the unemployment rate somewhat in the same range it’s been in since Obama has been in office.

For those of you that are wondering what to do, if you’re young, keep doing what you’ve been doing as to putting money into your 401K and retirement funds. If you are within retirement age (15 yrs or less), I wish I had all the answers. Each person’s life is different and their needs during the later years differs from one to another. For the next two years (at least) I recommend buying into commodities. The U.S. dollar is going to continue to lose value as the Federal Reserve tries to save the economy with another round of quantitative easing (QE3). Gold and silver are the best hedge when face with these types of economic woes.